The Price of Innumeracy

The Price of Innumeracy

Not just American culture, I’m afraid. You will see examples all over the world.

The biggest issue, I think, is that people have little ability to distinguish one large number from another large number. This leads them to unjustified outrage in some instances, and to apathy in other instances where outrage would be appropriate.

This situation is made worse by the fact that almost no one in the media knows anything at all about math or science.

As XKCD put it:

Pagans can afford to be innumerate, as ‘reality is whatever I say it is.’

Christians may not: and not just because there’s an entire book on Numbers in the Bible, and you can actually cause lethal sins with a census.

(as it implicitly encourages State power over God’s righteousness, tempting the king to rely on armies instead of obedience to God)

Christians must understand that there is a God-created objective reality outside of your skull, and it won’t change merely because you — or the Right Sort — think it should. Words with power have actual content, actually reflect the truth – and the truth is defined by Jesus Christ, and the lawful framework He has set in motion, tempered by His mercy and compassion.

What you say does not go. What Jesus says, goes.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him,

Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.

Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?

Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace.

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. — Luke 14:28-33

Jesus believes in counting the cost… accurately.
For His Holy Spirit has no place for lies.

Fortunately, the more you align your life according to Jesus’ ethics, the more power your words and actions have. But the more you stray from His Way, the less power you get.

Or correct. Or incorrect. Nothing is. Physicists are simply beginning to act as though they realize that and it’s okay. We are animals and animals are never wrong. We just win or lose power struggles.

Yesterday, we noted that Peter “Not Even Wrong” Woit thinks that 2016 was the worst year ever for fake physics. He noted an item by Marcus Woo, at ScienceFriday, “Why the Multiverse Isn’t Just Madness”

Alternate realities, parallel dimensions, and multiple universes. Whatever you call it, the notion of other versions of existence is one of the most popular tropes in science fiction. In some other universe, you’re not reading this sentence but skydiving. In another, you’re nothing but a cockroach. In yet another, not only is life impossible, but atoms don’t even exist.

In recent years, though, such seemingly crazy ideas have shifted from fantasy and speculation toward bona fide science. Even among physicists, the multiverse has gone mainstream.

Theoretically, infinite universes might stretch beyond our own, like endless bubbles in a sea of boiling water. Each bubble has its own laws of physics, and although we may never visit or even see another bubble, some physicists say growing evidence is making the multiverse increasingly plausible—and even probable.

“Fifteen years ago, when you talked about the multiverse, the attitude of many physicists was just ridicule,” says Alex Vilenkin, a physicist at Tufts University. “But there has been a great change in attitude.” More.

The change in attitude has been a more clearly stated willingness to accept non-evidence-based theorizing over evidence from this universe (because the evidence from our univese suggests fine-tuning or design).

As that attitude metastasizes, science disciplines will change beyond recognition. Persons with an attractive, though evidence-scant, theory will certainly like and promote the change. And science becomes politics by other means.

Note: Dr. Woit writes as if he thinks that the Templeton Institute is to blame for all this but it is actually implicit in naturalism, and is only now becoming obvious. We will see stranger things.

Science without God is dying.

For science to turn from death to life, they need to (minimally) admit that the universe is the creation of some sort of super-intelligence.

(More is needed than this: Jesus must be acknowledged as King, for science as a field to truly be redeemed from death to life. But the first step is necessary, if the goal is to be ever reached!)

This, they will not do. Primarily due to their ideological commitment to atheistic materialism, although the fear of loss of funding is a surprisingly strong motivator as well.

No repentance? Death awaits… as well as darkness, and madness, and disgrace.
As well as hell itself, and then the lake of fire.

Fortunately, it is mainly the Western Scientific Establishment that has this commitment to Death, and will go down with the S.S. Darwin. After some disruption, scientific advancement will continue, leaving the West behind in their delusions and detachment from reality.

Christians have an opportunity to both get on the road to reality themselves, and bring their fellow believers and the entire Church on the road to reality.

And by taking up the responsibility for this, and by putting in the decades of commitment to master the road and teach others of it, Christians will once again regain authority in this culture.

Service to God and others is the road to power and authority… with responsibility before a watching God, who rewards obedience and punishes rebellion.